


Forged Misery

by scrawlingcomet



Category: Final Fantasy XV, Kingsglaive, Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Death, Gen, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-05
Updated: 2018-01-05
Packaged: 2019-02-28 16:19:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13275249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scrawlingcomet/pseuds/scrawlingcomet
Summary: A vignette on how Nyx views Titus and how Titus views himself.





	Forged Misery

Titus Drautos is peculiar ….in a lot of ways, Nyx thinks. He stands so tall, looming, solid, and illusive in the way that statues do. Only exits when he wants, when he wants you to witness him. Always ready to use that to his advantage and intimidate, look down at you from his nose. His steps are heavy and echoing, a warning to his presence.  His shoulders are always so infuriatingly straight because he holds them with purpose. Nyx has never seen the man slouch, he doesn’t think.

 

Captain of the Kingsglaive, and a respected fearsome warrior, Titus is everything he wants to be, and everything Nyx is happy he doesn’t have to be.

 

There’s also this scent about him, especially when he’s just coming off the field of battle, and sometimes when he seems to drop out of thin air –frankly he’s too quiet sometimes. It’s almost burnt. Honestly, it’s almost nothing to note, him and all the Glaives smell like that. Burnt in crystalline fire, everything broken into light and smashed back together in an instant. Like how wood burning in a furnace sits just on the cold air of winter. But Titus is a little different. He’s more like burnt copper, like the way the smell of rust and dirt sinks into your palms after touching old metal on a hot day. The way it slithers up your nose and down your lungs and burns your eyes.

 

It used to make him wonder, but now he knows why.

 

Yes, now he knows why the smell of blood charred and hardened settles in the air when he’s near.

 

Titus Drautos is peculiar… in his one singular way, Nyx realizes, his blade buried deep in Titus… Glauca’s chest nudging at that small crumpled heart. Armor tries in vain to meld together and protect his already battered and tarnished skin. He is bare and open and so sure that pulling them all down into suffocating muck and blood was best. Smiling so self-satisfied because he is so stubborn and unyielding till the end. Nyx has never seen the man defeated, he doesn’t think.

 

Nyx burns, but it’s just a distant smoldering now. His own skin blistering, and burning, and turning to gray ash as magic blue and streaked underneath fades away. He can’t tell now who burns more, him or the man dying with him. Ash flutters onto the wind, and metal melts into the cooling embers.

 

Titus Drautos is Glauca, he is a scorned traitor, drowned in his own beliefs, everything twisted and mottled with shrapnel’s of pain.

 

What a fitting end for a man who _pretended_ and _believed_ he was everything he wants to be, and Nyx, in a dying laughing breath, is so much like him, but nothing like him, and is everything Glauca left behind.

 

 **___________________________________**  

 

It’s a lie if he’s being honest, but only the first few times that he says it to himself.

 

_“This is the best way, this is how I get back my home, and this is how we’ll all be free. For hearth, and home.”_

It took repetition, saying it over, _and over_ , from the first hours of his waking moments till his last. Till his voice ran hoarse and blood stained his tongue. He can will metal around his body now, there’s no turning back, so he wills his mouth to say it, to shape around syllables till they string into a coherent sentence, till they sit right in his heart like the truth.

 

Then it is the truth.

 

There is a constant dull ache deep in his bones, but the metal injected in them keeps him standing. He takes a small delight in watching people jump out the way as he stomps down the halls. That at least is a salve for his pain. He doesn’t have the patience to talk long these days, he has a mission, and he will see it through till the end. He will cut down whomever he must.

 

The mask doesn’t soften it by any means, every thing about this armor enhances his natural abilities even his sight. So he sees their terror, their sadness, their anger, but he is numb to it. Titus saw his home burned and flattened and forgotten, and he is just supposed to accept that, to swallow that. To keep moving like the screams didn’t keep him up at night. Everyone says they feel your pain, hear your cries, say they’ll help, but only if you help them, and then they’ll think about it. No more, he will seize control of his destiny.

 

Niflheim isn’t made of magic and fairytales, vague prophecies, it’s made of science and humanity seizing control, seizing their destiny. They can control daemons, they can make soldiers out of them, and they can do anything and everything Lucis can’t. Lucis is just magic, running from daemons, running from the dark, with any real power in the hands of the few, and sacrificing their most downtrodden. Lucis can do nothing but shrink.

 

So shrink it does. Till all that is left is a fading broken Wall, and then Insomnia falls to rubble. And he sees magic and daemons class and fall. Red and blue light burn away at each other till they fall into rubble and fire. He laughs. Even as steel burns in his chest and scrapes his heart, even as his armor screams and grinds at his bones trying to make something out of him, he knows he is right, and he chose his destiny. So he laughs at Nyx, who burns to ash beside him having let magic consume him, because he did not die for nothing.

 

He sincerely believes that.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I just I don't know. It started with me shittalking Titus and that I think he should smell like burnt copper and just went from there. I feel like this is not even the last I'm going to write on him I have at least one more idea and it's my fault lol
> 
> Anyways thanks for reading, I'd love to hear your thoughts.
> 
> You can stop by [ scrawlingcomet ](https://scrawlingcomet.tumblr.com/)  
> where I crosspost, or just to chat, I'm open to that.


End file.
